Facebook’s News Feed Is Now Just Feed

Goodbye, News Feed. Hello, Feed. Meta said Tuesday that it is simplifying the name of the cornerstone of Facebook in order to “better reflect the broad nature of content you see as you scroll.” The name change has begun rolling out in various parts of the flagship blue application, and this process will continue over the coming weeks, with a spokesperson for the company stressing, “This does not impact your current experience on Facebook in any way.” https://twitter.com/facebookapp/status/1493633545444675589 Facebook completely overhauled its experience when it introduced News Feed with no warning in September 2006, prompting protests and threats to boycott the social network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded in a note titled “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you,” writing in part, “We've been getting a lot of feedback about Mini-Feed and News Feed. We think they are great products, but we know that many of you are not immediate fans, and have found them overwhelming and cluttered. Other people are concerned that non-friends can see too much about them ... We didn't take away any privacy options. [Your privacy options remain the same.] The privacy rules haven't changed. None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn't see it before the changes … Nothing you do is being broadcast; rather, it is being shared with people who care about what you do—your friends.” He took a more conciliatory tone days later, writing in another open letter, “We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed, we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them.” Then-Facebook weathered the storm with the addition of clearer privacy settings and other tweaks, and News Feed has been the lifeblood of the Facebook experience since. Two changes implemented by the company in recent years were major factors behind the name change. In January 2018, Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook users would “see less public content like posts from businesses, brands and media,” and more content from friends and family, in their News Feeds. And in October 2019, a stand-alone Facebook News tab debuted in the U.S., eventually expanding to Australia, Germany, the U.K. and, just added Tuesday, France. The company said in a memo to employees that the name change was implemented to avoid confusion and not lead people to believe that they were going to see a feed of news stories, rather than content from family and friends, The Verge senior reporter Alex Heath said in a tweet Tuesday.

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Facebook’s News Feed Is Now Just Feed

The social network’s primary destination was introduced with much controversy in September 2006

David Cohen

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David Cohen